Sunday, May 4, 2014

Tending jazz at the Kitty Kat

By Chet Williamson

Reggie Walley

When I first started writing The Jazz Worcester Real Book, I had
hoped to include a collection of interviews with musicians talking about some
of the places they had played. Unfortunately, with profiles of 100 people and
just as many accompanying published compositions, I simply ran out of room. I
still have all of the conversations and from time to time I’ll post them.

Here’s one on the Kitty Kat as recalled
by bassist and trumpeter Bunny Price. Owned by a one-time tap dancer, vocalist
and drummer Reggie Walley, the Kitty Kat Lounge was the place to play.

Located
at 252 Main Street, in what is now a parking lot, the lounge was upstairs from the dance
studio that Walley and his wife Mary ran from 1947 to 1967.

Jerry Pelegrini

The club opened in
1969 and closed in 1976. In its short life, the Kat proved to be the incubator
for many of today’s local players of that generation, including Jim and Dick
Odgren, Al Arsenault, Ken and Babe Pino, Rob Marona, Jack Pezanelli, Gene Wolocz, Jim Arnot, Tom
Herbert, Jerry Pelligrini, David Agerholm, and many others who cut their whiskers at the Kat.

Organist Gene Wolocz

Local musician Bunny Price not only
played in the house band, but he was also the regular bartender and a silent
partner.

“The club came along in 1969,” he said. “We
had sessions right away. We started with our group that I brought in from the
Peacock Club. It was Al Mueller on piano, myself on bass, Bill Myers on
trumpet, Larry Monroe on alto and Reggie Walley on drums. Bobby Gould played
with us for a while. We were the house band. We might have been using the name
of the Soul Jazz Quintet because that’s what it stemmed from. My dad [trumpeter
Barney Price] and Howie [Jefferson] would also come down. Reggie was the house
drummer. Reggie was all over the place. He was Mr. Personality. Hey, ‘Bunny, give
these guys a drink.’ That was Reggie.

Al Mueller, Bunny Price, Bill Myers, Bob Gould, Larry Monroe and fans

“We would alternate with Al Arsenault and
Jackie Stevens. We used to take my organ out of my house. I had like a
spinet-type organ, a Lowrey with a Leslie speaker. We used that to get Al the
gig. He was an attraction, you know. The club eventually bought a Hammond B-3.”

What nights did you present jazz?

“We started making Thursday a ‘pioneer’
[jam session] jazz night. Jackie Stevens was probably our biggest feature. He
was a good friend with Al Arsenault. Jackie was a good solid modern player. He
was like a bebop player. He swung hard. He played that horn. He wasn’t a Getz
player, no laid back player. Jackie blew that horn. There’s no doubt about it.
He got tied up with Al Arsenault a lot. They jammed around. Also, with Gene
Wolocz. Jackie was an exception.

Jackie Stevens

"The next big person to come through there
would be Dick Odgren. My dad worked down at the bank and his wife worked at the
bank. She was telling my dad that her husband was coming home from the Navy and
he was playing piano in the Navy Band. So I guess my dad told him to come on
down. That’s how we all got to know him. Right after that, a year or so later,
his brother Jimmy started to come down. He was a young skinny kid. I heard him
and I said this kid is going to be good. You know what I’m saying." [The club
later added Sunday afternoons as well.]

Dick and Jimmy Odgren, late '70s

How was the club laid out?

“I remember you’d walk up the stairs,
turn right into the music room and the bar was in the back to the left. We played in front of the window. Reggie built
the stage. I think there were four or five booths. If you have six people in
the booth you have 25-30 people on that side. I would say roughly – I forget
what the license called for – you did have a count for safety purposes. I think
that lounge sat anywhere from 70 to 75 people.

“On the other side there was like an
empty area for people to dance. On the left-hand side of this big room, where
the stage was, there was a small bar. It probably sat six people. Then the bar
sat 12 to 15 people. For a while we had a little kitchen. We sold like open
steak sandwiches and salad for a few bucks. It was also a social hall. We had a
lot of wedding receptions there. Back in those days they paid you $35 bucks for
the use of the hall.”

Guitarist Jack Pezanelli and saxophonist Tom Herbert

What was it like tending bar at the Kat?

“I started as a barkeep. My thing was
taking care of the bar. That was my responsibility. If you know this business,
you know the thieves. The sound wasn’t too bad. I spent an awful lot of time in
the bar area but I could hear everything. That’s how I first heard Nat Simpkins
when he came in with some of those Soul bands from Boston. He was the
tenorman backing up some of the black singers. I don’t even remember their
names. They came in from Providence and Boston. We had a lot of good people. [*Nat Simpkins would later be a regular
at Walley’s next club, the Hottentotte, which will be featured in a future posting.]

Who actually owned the club?

Nat Simpkins

"The club was the involvement of three
couples, three partners. Reggie was the frontman, in name and everything.
Reggie had been paying rent at the dance studio downstairs. "Then there was Dr.
Goldsberry and his wife, me and my wife [Betty Price, a former School Committee member],
Reggie and [his wife] Mary [a former dancer in Lou Leslie’s Blackbirds and the stepdaughter of famed civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune.]

Mary and Reggie at the Kat

"Dr. Goldsberry bought the license. We got
the place as a tavern license from a place down on Water Street that was going out of business. Now with a tavern license you could
go to City Hall and you could apply for an "all pourers" license. It’s a
transfer. That’s what got us off the ground."

Howie Jefferson, Al Mueller, Bob Gould, and Bunny Price

What happened to the Kitty Kat?

“It went under. Mr. [Barry] Krock [local
property owner] bought the building. We were supposed to have preference to buy
the building. The long-range plan was to buy it from Commerce Bank. It lasted a
good five, six years. Everybody was welcome. Anybody could come and play. It
was really open.”

Jack Tubert

In a 1971 article in the Worcester Telegram, writer Jack Tubert
reviewed one of the sessions. “Wall-to-wall music,” he writes, “that’s the
attraction any Sunday afternoon when you want to stop moaning about nothing to
do in the city and make it upstairs to the Kitty Kat Lounge in downtown Worcester.”

Howie Jefferson played host. Tubert describes
him as, “the cool cat with 41-years of blowing well-rounded jazz notes on his
tenor sax, shows the way in Sunday jam sessions that draw the best musicians –
and crowd of appreciative buffs.”

Visiting the week before, Tubert again
chronicles the proceedings by saying, “Last Sunday, Barney Price was on
trumpet. Reggie Walley, David Laine, Don Lareau, and Roger Larson all took a turn
at the drums, while Al Arsenault played jazz organ and Everett Freeman handled
the cool bass. Al Moore sat in for a set on flute, and young rocker Babe Pino
took a turn at blowing harmonica and handling vocals. Man, they made music.”

Al Arsenault, Ken Pino and Babe Pino

Taking a breather, Jefferson tells Tubert that the
musicians love to play old classics like “When the Saints go Marching In.” “This
is what we love to do, but,” says Howie, “I still love the pretty tunes. Things
like ‘Body and Soul.’ ‘Soon it’s Going to Rain.’ There’s a pretty tune.”

In describing the third floor lounge at
252 Main Street Tubert writes, “With the mirrored wall reflecting every angle
of the musicians in action (Arsenault’s artistic hands caught on the
double-tiered organ keyboard by a mirror behind his head), the group broke fast
with Benny Goodman’s ‘The Angel’s Sing,’ a 10-minute joy.”

As the band takes the tune through the paces,
Tubert says, “After Jefferson introduced the theme with a big, fat, and moving
chorus, the other musicians took turns leading the tune around, each to his own
liking, then back to Howie for a couple more bats. Just beautiful. It was the
same with ‘Blues in the Night,’ Arsenault showing the way with his wild right
hand.

Reggie kicking

Tubert then reports that club owner
Reggie Walley sat in the drummer-driver’s seat and took the band for a spin
through “The Preacher,” and the group’s signature tune, “Organ Grinder Swing.”
“Thirty-nine minutes of beautiful, unrestrained music,” Tubert says. “The
audience gave ‘m a heavy hand.”

Barney Price

Trumpeter Barney Price is next up. Tubert
describes him as a player with a warm, rich tone that has marked his playing
for more than 30 years. He says Barney never sounded better providing the
trumpet backdrop for Walley’s singing of “Summertime.”

“Livin’ was easy,” Tubert notes, “just
listening.” In the early 1970s, poet Nic "Rock" Karcasinas published a book of poems called, Nicodemas. This is one of the pieces: